martes, 24 de marzo de 2015

Third Conditional: no possibility

The first conditional and second conditionals talk about the future. With the third conditional we talk about the past. We talk about a condition in the past that did not happen. That is why there is no possibility for this condition. The third conditional is also like a dream, but with no possibility of the dream coming true.Last week you bought a lottery ticket. But you did not win. :-(

condition

result

Past Perfect

WOULD HAVE + Past Participle

If

I had won the lottery

I would have bought a car.

Notice that we are thinking about an impossible past condition. You
did not win the lottery. So the condition was not true, and that
particular condition can never be true because it is finished. We use
the past perfect tense to talk about the impossible past condition. We
use WOULD HAVE + past participle to talk about the impossible past
result. The important thing about the third conditional is that both the
condition and result are impossible now.

Sometimes, we use should have, could have, might have instead of would have, for example: If you had bought a lottery ticket, you might have won.